Alina Mcleod is a popular travel YouTuber.
She has 370K subscribers on her eponymous YouTube channel.
Alina was a model and an actress.
Introduction
Alina Andreeva (Alina Mcleod) was born on 17 February 1991 in Kyiv, Ukraine. The country was a part of the Soviet Union at the time.
She has East European, Baltic, Balkan and Scandinavian ethnicity.
Alina grew up in downtown Kyiv until 5 and then moved to Kinistino, a small, conservative town in rural Saskatchewan, Canada, along with her mother and stepfather.
At the time, the town had around 700 inhabitants and she grew up there.
Her mother tongue was Russian and she learnt speaking English, at 5, only after coming to Canada.
The young Alina wanted to grow up to become an astronaut. Later, thanks to her interest in psychology, she wanted to become a psychologist.
When she applied for Canadian citizenship, at 18, she legally changed her name from Alina Andreeva to Alina Mcleod. She received Canadian citizenship at 20.
Her mother, Lena, was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia and Alina’s biological father was also born in Russia. They separated when Alina was a baby.
Lena met Gordon, a Canadian farmer from Saskatchewan, in 1995, when he was on a tour of Ukraine. They later married in Ukraine.
They moved to Kinistino in 1996. A few years later, Alina’s biological parents divorced.
Alina doesn’t have siblings.
She studied at Kinistino Composite High School and graduated in 2008. Then, she started living in Saskatoon.
Volunteering in Lima
At 17, after graduating high school, Alina, along with her father, went on a three-week trip to Lima, Peru and volunteered there.
The trip changed her mindset. She learnt to appreciate her life and realized true happiness doesn’t come from superficial and material things.
Later, Alina also travelled to India.
She fell in love with travelling and travelled widely even before becoming a travel YouTuber.
Modelling at 13
The young Alina watched a lot of fashion television and decided to become a model and an actress.
She started modelling at 13 and a year later, she signed up with SHE Modelling Agency in Saskatchewan.
As there weren’t many modelling opportunities in Saskatchewan, Alina attended Faces West, a modelling convention in Vancouver.
Thanks to her good performance there, she attracted many modelling agencies and chose to work with Team Evviva in Tokyo.
Alina got her first modelling contract in Tokyo at 15.
Even though she never travelled to Asia before, she decided to go to Tokyo. She bought Rosetta Stone’s Japanese language learning program.
Alina travelled to Tokyo, in January 2006, solo and started working as a model at Team Evviva. She fell in love with Japan.
She was the youngest person in the agency and worked with brands like Canon, Mitsubishi, Honda, Peach John and Shiseido. She worked at Team Evviva until March 2009.
In Tokyo, Alina met many successful businesspersons who were travelling the world and got inspired by them.
She decided to not attend university but travel the world and follow her dreams even though people in her hometown expected her to get a job and settle down.
Acting & waitressing
At 20, Alina secured a role in a Japanese TV show Ataru which was the number one show in Japan in 2012.
She also worked in many short films.
In 2013, Alina moved to Toronto to attend Toronto Film School. She took acting training there until 2014.
She was a part-time actress at TEAM Inc, The Characters and Creative Drive Artists in Toronto from January 2008 to November 2016.
Then, Alina worked as a model at Schönberg Models, from October 2016 to January 2017, in Tokyo.
She loved travelling while working as a model. She also did part-time waitressing and worked as a waitress for a decade.
Also, Alina worked as a freelance writer, worked in a Thai restaurant, did promotions, ran her own photography business and did a few other random jobs when she wasn’t earning enough from modelling and acting.
Many of her businesses didn’t succeed and she had to work at the jobs she hated to make ends meet.
Alina worked as a freelance travel host for VIVA Lifestyle & Travel Media, from December 2016 to May 2017, in Toronto.
YouTube over acting
After many years of modelling and acting, Alina realized that she couldn’t earn good money from them. Also, she wasn’t getting a lot of acting opportunities after she moved to Toronto for the film industry.
As she had a good camera presence and knew about cameras and was creative, she decided to start her YouTube channel.
Also, at the time, Alina was inspired by Sonya Esman and this inspired her to start on YouTube. Her other YouTube inspirations were Hey Nadine, Drew Binsky and Bald and Bankrupt.
She started her eponymous YouTube channel on 26 October 2013.
Alina started publishing beauty videos but later made some of her videos private. Her first public video, “A Model’s Holy Grail Beauty Products,” was published on 2 October 2015.
Her channel started as a beauty channel as she loved makeup and was a model but her beauty videos didn’t become popular.
Alina also started publishing travel videos in 2015 and realized she liked YouTube more than acting.
During her first year on YouTube, she used to upload videos irregularly. Later, even when she started working regularly and putting around 70 hours a month on her channel, she used to earn only around $100-200 a month from AdSense and affiliates.
Alina loved YouTube more than acting as the former allowed her to travel, be creative and perform and be her own boss but for the latter, she needed to have a flexible schedule, be open for auditions and she didn’t have time freedom.
Also, in the film industry, she had to work long hours almost for free. She had to put long hours just into auditions without knowing whether it would lead to a job or not and also face bureaucracy.
Switching niches
At 25, Alina travelled to Japan for her last modelling contract and vlogged her experiences around Japan. Thanks to this, she reached 1,000 subscribers on YouTube and this gave her the confidence that she can grow her channel even bigger.
It took her two years to reach 1,000 subscribers on her channel.
In 2018, Alina visited Moldova, Transnistria, Ukraine and Romania in a month and a half and shot videos which performed very well.
Thanks to the success of these travel videos, she completely switched from beauty videos to travel videos.
For the first four years of starting her channel, Alina wasn’t earning decent money even though she was working long hours on her channel.
She used to work at her waitressing job and also work on her YouTube channel and other businesses to achieve financial freedom and independence.
Before becoming a full-time YouTuber, Alina used to work hard to save as much money as possible and then travel with it for a month or two and shoot the footage for her channel.
Trans-Siberian Express changes it all
In 2019, even though Alina was publishing regularly, she was earning only around 300-400 CAD per month but decided to become a full-time YouTuber. At the time, she had around 20,000 subscribers.
She was inspired by the success of her Japan vlogs.
At the time, Alina was frustrated with her life in Canada. So, she quit working with her acting agency and quit her waitressing job, which was her main source of income.
She decided to go on the Trans-Siberian Express across Russia for six months and publish its videos. This was her dream trip which she wanted to do for a long time.
Even though Alina loved the trip, she was stressed as she was travelling on a shoestring budget and didn’t have travel insurance. She spent around 1500 CAD for the trip.
She wanted her Trans-Siberian Express videos to become successful so that she could increase her YouTube earnings and continue being a full-time YouTuber.
If this didn’t work out, Alina would be in thousands of dollars of debt and have to return to Toronto to work as a waitress and put her channel on the back burner.
Prior to the trip, she worked many extra shifts at her waitressing job to have a security blanket of money. She also worked as a freelance content creator for Alex, a YouTuber.
Alina’s plan worked out as at the end of six months, one of her Trans-Siberian Express videos became viral. Her channel quickly grew from 20K to 50K subscribers, her other videos also started picking up, she tripled her income and never looked back.
As she occasionally spoke Russian in the Trans-Siberian Express videos, they attracted Russian viewership and became viral. Also, adding Russian subtitles helped.
Alina also started receiving new sponsorship opportunities.
For the first time ever, in December of that year, her YouTube AdSense income crossed 1,000 CAD.
Alina continued travelling as her budget for travel was less than her full-time living expenses in Toronto.
She films her videos with DJI Osmo Pocket 3, Insta360 Go Ultra, Insta360 X5, DJI Action 6 and DJI Mini 5 Pro.
Currently, Alina has 370K subscribers on her channel. She edits her videos with Wondershare Filmora.
She also has a Russian YouTube channel Алина Маклеод but she isn’t currently working on it.
Through her travel and YouTube channel, Alina covers less-travelled, unique destinations and dispel the myths surrounding them.
She has travelled to over 50 countries and her favourite destinations are Astana, Almaty, Primorsky Krai and Lake Baikal.
Anthony Bourdain is her inspiration and her future plan is to produce a travel show for Netflix.
New home
As Alina felt the cost of living to be too high in Canada, she left the country in 2024 and settled in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Also, she wasn’t happy with the safety, cleanliness and opportunities in Canada.
Alina chose to settle in Bulgaria as she was impressed by the country when she first visited in 2020.
Also, the cost of living was less, English was widely spoken, it was business and tax friendly, nature was good and the country was located centrally in Europe which would allow her to conveniently travel Europe.
But as Bulgaria changed its immigration rules in 2026, Alina returned to Canada and is currently searching for a new country to settle in.
Tidbits
- She is a good cook and knows Japanese and Russian. She understands Ukrainian as it is similar to Russian.
- Alina’s zodiac sign is Aquarius and she is 5’7″.
- She has a sweet tooth and her favourite desserts are crème brûlée, Kyiv cake, ice cream and cookies. She also loves cabbage rolls, vinegret and potato pancakes.
- Alina loves Thai and Jordanian cuisine.
- When her dad retired and sold his farm, they travelled to six continents. They trekked to Everest Base Camp for two weeks and climbed to a summit of 18,500ft.
So, how are you inspired by the success story of Alina Mcleod?
Share with me in the comment section below.
0 Comments